Wednesday, May 23, 2012

James Kennedy Patterson, served from 1869 to 1910 as president of the
institutions that were to become the University of Kentucky. Through his
vision, diplomatic skills, administrative acumen, and, at times, financial support,
the fledgling Agricultural and Mechanical (A&M) College of Kentucky was
transformed into an independent state university.

Ambrotype of a young James Patterson

Patterson was born in the parish of Gorbals in Glasgow, Scotland in 1833.
His family emigrated to the United States in 1842, when he was nine years of
age, and settled near Madison, Indiana. Patterson received his B.A and Master
of Arts degrees from Hanover College (Indiana) in 1856 and 1859, respectively,
and an honorary Ph.D. from the same institution in 1875. In 1859 he married Lucelia
Wing, daughter of a wealthy New Bedford, Massachusetts whaler who had moved to
Kentucky about 1800. The Pattersons had two children, Jeanie Rumsey, who died
in infancy, and William Andrew, who passed away in 1895 at the age of 27.

Lucelia Wing Patterson

With the merger in 1865 of Transylvania College, Kentucky University (in
Harrodsburg), and the newly state-chartered Agricultural and Mechanical College
of Kentucky, Patterson was appointed professor of Latin and Civil History in this
enlarged Kentucky University. At the same time he secured the chair of History
and Metaphysics, which he occupied until 1910. In 1869 Patterson was elected
third Presiding Officer of the University's now constituent Agricultural and
Mechanical College. After denominational and theological bickering and
debilitating financial hardship experienced by the hybrid institution, the
State Legislature in 1878 formally separated the A&M College from KU, and Patterson
assumed the position of president of the independent school.

One of the A&M president's foremost administrative efforts, following
the erection of the college's first buildings on its new Lexington Fairgrounds
site, ultimately at his own expense, was an attempt to repair the fiscal damage
incurred by the school during its preceding thirteen years of existence in
linkage with Kentucky University. To this end he led the fight to convince the
Kentucky General Assembly to enact legislation establishing a one-half-cent
state property tax to raise desperately needed funds to support the struggling
College. The climax of his crusade - an impassioned speech on the floor of the
Senate - succeeded in sweeping away the formidable, organized opposition to the
tax, and the measure was approved in 1882. The revenues from this new tax,
however, proved insufficient to provide for the college's stability and
continued growth. With the financial situation of the institution in question,
Patterson considered other means of fundraising. When all other options had
been exhausted he secured a personal loan to procure the needed money.

President Patterson at his desk

Patterson proved a capable chief executive, administering the daily
operations and affairs of the A&M College wisely and economically, although
he was criticized by his detractors as unduly tyrannical and miserly, the
latter particularly as it related to the salaries of employees and to physical
expansion. Many in the community and state likewise felt that the president was
incorrectly removing the college from its moorings in agricultural and
engineering instruction, as mandated by the Morrill Land Grant Act, and setting
it on a course of becoming an essentially liberal arts institution.

Dedication of the Patterson statue in 1934

Increasing curricular diversification led to upgrade A&M's official
academic classification, and Patterson and his Board of Trustees in 1908
successfully lobbied the General Assembly in support of changing the school's
name to: "State University, Lexington, Kentucky". He continued as president
for two more years, assisting in the transition of the institution to
University status. In 1910 he retired from the presidency. The Board of
Trustees unanimously approved his stipulated conditions which included:
attendance at Board and faculty meetings; serving as adviser to the incoming
President and as representative of the University on the state and national
level; and continued residence in the campus house built for the President in
1882, which he occupied until his death in 1922. The life and legacy of
Kentucky's "Pater Universitatis" are today honored in University
buildings and a roadway which bear his name, and in the great seated statue of
the founder, erected in 1934, which sits adjacent to the institution's Main
Building and astride the campus he built and nurtured.